This is intended for all my friends, goodhearted as they may be, who just don't care for baseball. So I would ask all of them to please, take a moment to stop punching your own mother, extinguish your American flags, and put down your copies of the Little Red Book, before you read on. Frankly, I find myself trying to convince these friends to like baseball, which is like trying to convince someone to like steak, or convincing the pope that Martin Luther had a few good ideas.
Of course when I undertake to convince my Maoist friends of baseball's charms, I end up struggling to define what exactly it is that I love about baseball so much, and why it is that I love it. And of course, the more I try to put together a legal brief in support of the game, the more I realize that it's like trying to prove the existence of a sunset. But there are reasons I love baseball, reasons hard to spell out into black and white, but I'll give it a go:
Baseball is like taking a walk through your old neighborhood: sometimes, if you're lucky, there will be something--a window pane, the light through the trees, the smell of mowed lawns and hot asphalt, something--that will remind you of when you were a kid. Sometimes all you'll see is how much everything's changed.
Baseball is like playing a good game of chess with your dad. You sit through everything, all the pawn moves, watching him spinning his wedding ring while he thinks, listening to the tock-tock of the old clock, slowly advancing your pieces. All for that one move when his eyes flick up to yours and he smiles, genuinely, and says, "Shit, I didn't see that." And you offer to let him take his last move back and he doesn't. Then he still beats you.
Baseball is me, six years old, sitting on the living room floor; even at that age I understand that Fenway Park is the bright burning heart of a neighborhood, the hearth for an entire city. Baseball is a six-year-old seeing but not fully understanding the contrast between Bill Buckner's downcast shame and the Mets celebrating in a writhing mass on the field.
Baseball is like watching a rocket launch. You can wait all day for that but, boy, you better not miss it.
Sometimes baseball is like going to a casino: the lights are bright, everyone is sweaty, and all they're after is your money. But sometimes, baseball is like going to church, the same church you went to your whole life and your parents too. Maybe you don't quite understand everything that is going on in front of you; maybe you can't, maybe you never will and should stop trying. But if you pay attention and believe for just a little while, it can send your heart soaring. Plus you should stand up when you sing.
